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Progressives, people of color, and women advocates, stuck in the
doldrums
of Bush's America, should look toward Scotland and Wales for relief.
Grounded in new "full representation" voting systems that provide
multi-party democracy, elections this May showed the value of voting
system
reform.

In contrast to the United States, where the number of women in
Congress is
stuck at 14 percent and declining in state legislatures, the Welsh
assembly
became the first parliament in the world in which women make up 50
percent
of members.
Commenting on women's significant success, Welsh politician Rhodri
Morgan
said "What is so remarkable is that up until the last decade of the
20th
century we had an appalling record. Until 1997, Wales only ever had
four
women Members of Parliament. Our industrial heritage meant business
was
conducted in smoke-filled rooms of men."

But 1997 was when Wales introduced a full representation voting system
--
and the change for women's representation was immediate. The Welsh
results
show how, under full representation, even a traditional society can
change.
Meanwhile in Scotland, under the U.S.-style winner-take-elections that
used
to elect their parliament, government always was a one-party
stronghold of
Tony Blair's allies in the Scottish Labor Party. But the recent
introduction of full representation (also known as proportional
representation) broke up the political machine and provided
representation
of the full diversity of Scottish opinion. In their May elections, the
anti-war Scottish Nationalist and Liberal Democratic parties won more
than
a third of seats, while the Green Party and Scottish Socialists won
more
than 10 percent of seats.

Scotland demonstrates the value of electoral justice in which parties
win
their fair share. The Scots use a "mixed" system -- some seats elected
by
winner-take-all, one-seat districts like in the United States, others
by
full representation. Of the 73 seats decided in one-seat contests, the
Labor Party won a landslide of 46 seats (63 percent) even though they
received less than 35 percent of the popular vote. The Greens and
Socialists won no seats. But the "full representation" seats balanced
things out, resulting in Labor winning its fair and proportional share
of
50 of 129 total seats.

Labor has been forced to negotiate and forge a coalition pact with the
Liberal Democrats, and to reach out to the Green Party as well, giving
progressives unprecedented influence. The Liberal Democrats have
demanded
more investment in health care and the introduction of full
representation
voting systems for local elections. Green issues on the table are
ending of
GM crop trials, public transport, and cutting pollution through home
energy-efficiency.

Many factors produced these results, including the hard work of
advocates
of women's representation and insurgent parties. But overwhelmingly
the
largest factor has been the introduction of full representation into
the
Scottish and Welsh parliaments.
"Full representation" describes voting systems in which groupings of
voters
elect seats in fair proportion to their share of the popular vote,
rather
than be shut out of representation if less than a majority. Ten
percent or
thirty percent of the vote wins correspondingly ten percent and thirty
percent of the seats, instead of nothing; 51 percent wins a bare
majority
instead of everything. Full representation produces more
representative
legislatures, which in turn produces truly representative policy, as
well
as the potential to define and change the direction of that policy.

Full representation has given Scottish and Welsh voters unprecedented
freedom to express their political preferences. In addition to the
stark
contrast in Scotland between the winner-take-all seats and overall
results,
without full representation the Labor Party in Wales would have won
fully
three-quarters of the seats with just two-fifths of the vote. In both
regions, then, with winner-take-all it would have been ho-hum,
one-party
government by a Labor Party that keeps tacking to the right.

In the United Kingdom, full representation also has been adopted for
elections to the European Parliament, London city council, and the new
regional assembly in Northern Ireland. A blue ribbon commission has
recommended full representation for the UK's national parliament. With
our
British political forebears testing the waters of "fair representation
for
all," it is time for this latest wave to wash across the Atlantic.
Full representation already has taken root in U.S. soil. In 2000, for
example, Amarillo, Texas became the largest city to use a full
representation system called cumulative voting. The results have been
uplifting. After being all-white for two decades, the seven-member
school
board now has two Latinas and one African-American. Women have won
more
seats, and turnout has surged.

On both sides of the Atlantic, the evidence is compelling.
Progressives and
advocates for representation for women, people of color, and minor
parties
would do well to work to replace 18th-century winner-take-all
elections
with full representation.

Steven Hill is a senior analyst with the Center for Voting and
Democracy
(www.fairvote.org) and author of Fixing Elections: The Failure of
America's
Winner Take All Politics (Routledge Press, www.FixingElections.com).
Rob
Richie is executive director of the Center.